History

"At the spring 1903 town meeting the Town voted (307 Yes and 68 No) to build a municipal electric light plant. Turbines were brought in to the municipal utility building on High Street, which had been constructed 9 years before. On Wednesday night November 18, 1903 the dynamo was started and the streets throughout the Town were brilliantly illuminated."

"In 1970 a proposal was made to build a nuclear power generating plant on the site of the former town dump at the end of Town Farm Road in Ipswich. MEPP Inc., an organization of 29 Massachusetts Municipal Electric Departments, had been studying Ipswich as a potential power plant location for six years. The suggestion was made that the Ipswich-Rowley area was particularly well-suited for a nuclear generation facility because of the shallow depth of bed rock geological formations and the proximity of a large body of cold war for condenser cooling."

"The proposal to build the nuclear power plant was soundly defeated at the 1971 Ipswich Town Meeting. In 2010, Ipswich voters approved construction of a wind turbine at that location at the end of Town Farm Road. A second turbine was approved at a 2011 special town meeting, with 72% of Ipswich residents in attendance voting for it."